Converting 3D faces to Polygons

Hello,

I have two queries. Kindly post any solutions which may help make this work faster. I'll be very grateful for your assistance.

1. I have a drawing which consists of a number of 3D faces and polylines. I want to convert all 3D faces to polygons. The current process I know is quite lengthy as it requires me to select a single 3D faces, convert it to polylines and then join the polylines together to form a polygon.

2. As I mentioned earlier, the second part of the drawings consists of polylines which connect the 3D faces together to essentially portray 'routes'. The preferred option is to have a single continuous polyline connecting 3D face A to 3D face B but in my drawing, there are breaks in the polylines going from A to B and in some cases, they stop just before connecting to the 3D face. Is there a way to select these polylines and convert them to a single polyline which also connects to the 3D faces on each end?

Please message me if the above queries are unclear and I'll endeavor to explain them further.

I'm using AutoCAD 2014.

Thank you.

I look forward to your responses.

Warm Regards

Not a mesh. Individual polygons. The 3D faces are essentially rectangles which represent duct chambers and we want to convert them to individual polygons so that each chamber can be added to one of the three layers.

Why create 3D faces if not needed/wanted?

Explode and Region comes to mind.

I got the file with 3D faces unfortunately so have to convert it. Could you be a bit more elaborate with your proposed solution? I'm a complete beginner at CAD.

Thank you.

EXPLODE will not work on 3DFace entities; however if you apply REGION first on them, this will allow you to explode to lines. Next call PEDIT to Join them in polylines as you whish. Since seems that you talk about some gaps, please investigate the joining with a Fuzz factor.

By the way, please don't miss that PLINE command works only in current plane, so is of no use if your drawing is 3D.

I know I posted a get total area of 3d faces it could be adapted to make new plines of all your 3d faces in one go, only problem is it was done a few years ago and posted here I may have done the code at home, will try to find it.

A quick search maybe this http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?40965-Converting-3D-Faces-into-3D-Polylines

Try the BOUNDARY command. When the Boundary Creation dialog box appears uncheck the Island detection box and choose Polyline as the Object type then click Pick Points and then click in the center of each 3DFACE.

lrm you must have lots of time on your hands click each centre ? The lisp "3dface area" only took a few seconds to do hundreds.

A quick dump of a 3dface variable "Cooordinates" holds the 4 points

Select object: ; IAcad3DFace: AutoCAD 3dFace Interface

; Property values:

; Application (RO) = #

; Coordinate = ...Indexed contents not shown...

; Coordinates = (267460.0 5.77582e+006 25.493 267462.0 5.77582e+006 25.3414 ... )

Hey BIGAL, are you trying to put me on the defensive? Sure, a lisp program could do it faster if you can find the program and know how to use it. stalemate says he has a "number" of 3DFACES, if that means 10, 20 or so, the Boundary method could be a lot faster than hunting down a lisp program. In addition, stalemate states that he is a "complete beginner". I am not sure what he would do with a statement like "Select object: ; IAcad3DFace: AutoCAD 3dFace Interface...". The Boundary method does have some limitations in that the user needs to be able to view the 3DFACES such that they can give a pick point inside the 3DFACE (which could be tricky in 3D depending on the orientation of the 3DFACES with respect to each other) but the command is easy to use and much faster than process he was using "...select a single 3D faces, convert it to polylines and then join the polylines together to form a polygon".

Maybe, this can help...

http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?82319-How-to-convert-3D-faces-or-mesh-to-line&p=561662&viewfull=1#post561662

LRm i am not trying to get in a war with you but with 30+ years of cad experience generally a question about 3dfaces involves massive numbers, a simple project for us would be around 2000 faces one I am working on right now around 200,000. Also did you have a look at my first post and the link, the last comment was it was very succesfull. The other post was general comment about how to get the co-ords of a 3dface. Like GP we have posted possible solutions that have already been submitted.

I think ts time to ask Stalemate did any of the suggestions help ? Otherwise I am sure a lisp will appear.